Hybrid Manager, Software Engineering – AI Core Engineering

at The Walt Disney Company

• Job title: Manager, Software Engineering – AI Core Engineering
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior, Lead
• Salary: $171,600 - $252,200 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Java, Python
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Glendale, United States

About the role

• Manager leading AI Core Engineering team, overseeing developers and guiding project delivery for Disney’s media technology innovations. Collaborating with cross-functional teams for AI adoption and systems integration.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of full stack engineers (backend-heavy) and UI-focused developers.
• Own execution of the AI Core roadmap, ensuring timely delivery of reusable agents, services, and developer-facing web apps.
• Partner with infrastructure, data, product, and security teams to integrate AI core capabilities into enterprise and customer-facing systems.
• Guide architecture and design, review team proposals, manage capacity, and mitigate risks and blockers to keep projects on track.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a leadership or management role.
• Expert in at least one foundational programming language, preferably Python or Java, with a track record of building production-grade systems.
• Proven experience managing teams delivering AI/ML-powered systems or developer tooling.
• Hands-on expertise with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph).
• Experience designing and delivering multi-agent architectures and applying modern AI system design patterns.
• Experience overseeing delivery of UI/web applications alongside backend services.
• Working knowledge of test automation and modern CI/CD practices for AI and backend systems.
• Strong ability to mentor engineers, manage performance, and build team culture.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to influence across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Set standards for code quality, test coverage, and production readiness across AI core components and web applications.

Benefits

• A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.